A POTOMAC RIVER HERSTORY
by keith harmon snow
She could never be sure
who betrayed her. Lured by her trusted friend Japazaws, Chief of
the
Pawtawomeckes, the legendary golden goddess boarded an English sloop captained
by Samuel Argall, moored on the Potomac River near what would later be Mount
Vernon. It was 1613. The abduction of the Indian princess sealed the doom of
the Algonquian nation. Her name was Pocahontas. She was betrayed for a
tarnished copper kettle and some measly English toys.
Months earlier Captain
Argall sailed up the Potomac to forge a military alliance with Japazaws.
Bonfires lit along the river announced the coming ships, while 500 bowmen
gathered to meet them. The pact of friendship was sealed with an exchange of
hostages. Argall also won 1,100 bushels of maize in the deal. But kidnapping
Pocahontas was the coup de grace: She was the daughter of the mighty Powhatan,
and the English were at war with the Powhatan chiefdom.
Nearly 400 years later,
on the Nightingale II, a breezy D.C. tourist boat, I am sailing smoothly up the
Potomac. It is August, and Washington is an oven. Because I am his only
passenger, Captain Skip Shankle is disconsolately wilted. ÒEven the fish are
complaining,Ó he mutters, wiping the sweat off his brow. (Captain Shankle is
dreaming of his annual off-season dive trip to the Caribbean.) The flat, gray
Potomac seems ready to boil.
I have met families on
vacation, power boaters, students, museum buffs, cigar-puffing diplomats, and
historians. Built on the birthright of native Americans and the backs of
African slaves, having seen a revolution and a civil war, and with its White
House and Pentagon and Watergate, Washington is a vortex of power. Most who
come here come to mingle with power. That is the seduction of this city.
I have come to explore
the river and discover her story. Like the cypress forests and the stately
swans, once abundant on the Potomac, the Algonquians are mostly gone. The
frosted winds blow out of the northwest every autumn, driving the blue crabs
down into their hidey holes, and geese loom in the sky. In the capitalÕs halls
of power, treaties are ever forged and broken. And the mighty Potomac --
undaunted now as then -- flows silently through it.
CO-HON-GO-ROO-TA
Free Africans sailed the
Atlantic to trade with the Indians long before Columbus, but the conquistador Admirante Pedro Menendez was the
first European known to have navigated this river (1574). Captain John Smith
named her the Elizabeth after his ship was halted by Little Falls, 10 miles north
of the Lincoln Memorial site known to the Indians as Òfish plenty ofÓ place.
ÒOtters, Beavers,
Martins, Luswarts, and Sables we found,Ó Smith wrote of this place, Òand the
abundance of fish lying so thicke with their heads above water, as for want of
nets we tried to catch them with a frying pan, but found this a bad instrument
to catch fish with.Ó Smith stood in the shallows spearing fish with his sword
until he was stung by a ray and given up for dead.
Under the ÒChainÓ Bridge
near Little Falls I find a burly Scott Roberts teaching his son Adam to fish.
Half a dozen catfish are strung over the side of the boat. ÒRow, row, row your
boat,Ó Scott sings, laughing. A retired soldier, Scott has worked this river
for years. ÒThe river is sweet,Ó he says, Òyou never know what gift it will
give you.Ó
The river is dark and
silent. I see fat old fish lurking in black currents. Cypress behemoths, their
gnarled roots clutching the shore, bespeak the tidewater swamps of a bygone
era. There are children hiking and swimming, kayakers and canoers challenging
the canyons and rapids. Rock walls climb to 250 feet, a buffer to the noisy
metropolis.
From rocks that the
locals call the ÒHens and ChickensÓ I drop into a blackwater pool. Like an
otter I soak and bask in hours of sunny river solitude. A bald eagle soars
overhead, and a great blue heron works the shallow pools. By sunset I am
sinking back into herstory in a plush chair at a Washington Pier juice
bar. My book is Pocahontas by historian Francis Mossiker. The Potomac
shimmers under the moon.
The natives knew the
wild Potomac as Cohongoroota. Some 5,000 Algonquians had peopled the Potomac
Valley for 10,000 years. They celebrated the bounty of the earth and her rites
of passage. They traded in beads and pearls, dyes and copper, hides and furs of
beaver, mink, otter and bear. They hunted communally. Wild creatures
proliferated.
The Potomac filled their
bellies with oysters, clams, turtles and crabs. Herring ran in March, sturgeon
and shad in April. They feasted on maize, beans, squash, pumpkins, gourds,
sunflowers, nuts and berries. Indian tobacco was sacred. Ceremoniously puffed,
rarely inhaled, it was magic and medicine, and Algonquian tradition put tobacco
fourth in the order of creation: God first made woman, second man, then Indian
maize, and then tobacco. Their tobacco would be their undoing.
Trade grew along the
Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay to the Appalachian Mountains. Like her fish,
smoked and dried, Potomac maize was the lifeblood of harsh winters for the English
colonists. These they took, by legislative fiat, by fooling the natives, by
force.
Armed with gunpowder and
bibles, Europe invaded Turtle Island (America) via the Potomac River valley.
Natives were forced off lands they had cleared; maize, cattle and tobacco
spread with the English plague. Herds of buffalo, rare on Potomac shores,
perished altogether. Whole tribes fled, north to the Great Lakes, west over the
mountains, pursued into oblivion.
By 1750, the valley was
explored and settled. ÒDuring the 62 years following the settlement at
Jamestown [Virginia],Ó wrote Thomas Jefferson, Òtwo-thirds of the Indians of 40
tribes disappeared because of smallpox, spirituous liquors, and the abridgment
of territory.Ó
To the lushness of
Turtle Island, the Europeans just kept coming. Some came for gold and silver,
some for adventure. Religious sects came to escape the witch-hunts of the
Reformation. Convicts came with the promise of freedom. The poor purchased
passage as indentured servants. Of all the reasons to risk the deadly Atlantic
crossing, however, greatest was the call of King tobacco. Here was the gem of
the British Empire.
KING TOBACCO RULES
On the shack at JackÕs
Boats, a Georgetown waterfront institution hidden for 55 years under the
Francis Scott Key bridge, I find a painting honoring ÒAk Wan Hee: Last of the
Analosan [sic] indian tribe... circa 1697.Ó
ÒI donÕt know anything
about that,Ó says Frank Baxter, partnered with brother Bill at JackÕs Boats.
ÒTalk to Tom Woodward.Ó JackÕs is busy with people checking canoes in and out.
Frank and Bill are sad, their father Jack having just died, and Frank sends me
off to Roosevelt Island. ÒTake a canoe over to that beach and have a swim.Ó
From JackÕs I paddle a
canoe to Analostan Island, an 88-acre nature reserve with a monument to Teddy
Roosevelt and his passion for wilderness. President Roosevelt rode horseback
along the Potomac from Little Falls to Great Falls, 15 miles upriver, hiking
and rock-climbing almost daily.
ÒJack and I built that
shop and I painted the murals,Ó octogenarian Tom Woodward later told me. Tom
has canoed the Potomac all his life. ÒWe learned how to swim on the Potomac
too,Ó he recalls. He chuckles. ÒAnalosan [sic] is the indian name for Roosevelt
Island. I made up all that other stuff about Ak Wan Hee. It was a joke: WhoÕs
gonna know about some Indian who lived 300 years ago?Ó
A boardwalk over the
islandÕs wetlands offers a glimpse of the PotomacÕs former wildness. With three
miles of trails, it is another soothing respite from sun and city. I read Pocahontas
under a giant cedar on a sandy Potomac beach. Ducks paddle in the marsh and
butterflies flit by. An occasional tourist drifts through.
ÒThe Confederates camped
out on Analosan Island during the Civil War,Ó Tom Woodward said. ÒI took a metal
detector out there looking for Confederate army trash. JackÕs sons found
arrowheads over there, but I never found anything. The river is not what it was
but itÕs still beautiful. You can be only two miles from the White House and
you feel like youÕre out in the wilderness.Ó
As irony would have it,
it was the widower John Rolfe who pioneered tobacco production (1615) in the
New World wilderness. Under the keen eye of his second wife, Lady Rebecca
Rolfe, John experimented with the golden weed Nicotiana tabacum, an exotic Brazilian
tobacco that grew sweeter, less harsh and more resilient in the American soil
than the rank native species Nicotiana rustica. His new wife -- the
recently Christianized Pocahontas -- advised him in planting in the traditional
native way.
John RolfeÕs crop came
in. By 1617 the Virginians had exported 20,000 pounds of leaf; by 1618, 40,000
pounds. To King James I, however, only a witch was more odious than a smoker
was: none dared puff in his presence. Smoke would Òinfecte the aire,Ó his
majesty predicted. It was Òdangerous to the lungsÓ and Òhurtful to the health
of the whole body.Ó King James levied a stifling tax on tobacco. He wrote and
railed against it. But even the King of England could not stop the burgeoning
trade in tobacco. By 1722, Potomac tobacco was manÕs meat, his drink, his
clothes and his future.
ManÕs past lives on in
the colonial architecture of Alexandria and Georgetown -- towns that grew into
bustling international ports for the budding colonies. Wealthy traders built
mansions in Georgetown, today the center of Washington nightlife. Walking the
cobblestones of Alexandria, I find the boyhood Home of Confederate General
Robert E. Lee. There is the Alexandria Archaeology Program, which houses
colonial artifacts, and the Black History Resource Center, which tells the
story of African-Americans here. The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary was the
corner drugstore for the Lees and Washingtons.
Plantations sprouted out
of the Potomac wilderness, sprawling Victorian mansions at their hearts. Here
lived the planter elite – the Washingtons, Lees, Jeffersons and
Hamiltons; the Lords Fairfax and Baltimore and Calvert. They built elaborate
heated greenhouses; their gardens were stocked with exotic plants, wild animals
and peacocks. Orangeries bespoke prestige and power; magic was invoked to plant
and harvest. Laborers were not allowed to water the gardens, where a womanÕs
touch was a deadly hex. Almost everyone lived on plantations; almost everyone
farmed tobacco. Almost everyone claimed the Pocahontas bloodline.
The Potomac was a bond,
a light in the wilderness for these planter elite. Bewigged and bespectacled,
men in split-tails, women in hoops, with servants and livery and lace, they
partied on sloops and ferries that plied the river to the tunes of Beethoven
and Mozart. They traveled Europe, their children in its top schools. They read
Shakespeare and Goethe, their brass telescopes turned to the heavens.
Conversation ran on
tobacco, horses, hunting and more tobacco. Ships from Europe and the West
Indies brought sugar and spice and everything nice -- presses and books, copper
and silver, Oriental porcelain, exotic woods and aromatic herbs. All ships that
sailed for merry England were loaded with tobacco. They sailed down the Potomac
and into the Chesapeake and out across the hostile Atlantic.
MERRY,
MERRY, QUITE CONTRARY
The father of King
Tobacco and the husband of Pocahontas, John Rolfe witnessed another portentous
event -- one that would similarly dictate the fate of millions and the next 400
years of history -- the first cargo of African slaves to be sold on AmericaÕs
shores.
ÒHowever far the stream
flows,Ó says an old Yoruba proverb, Òit never forgets its source.Ó For the
slaves whose lives were shattered for the plantation economy, the source was
the African hinterland. Washington was a metropole of slavery.
From 1675 to 1708, the
Potomac valley drew over 300 slaves a year; the trade then increased. ÒTo sell
slaves,Ó wrote Anne Elizabeth Yentsch, in A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves,
Òtraders brought prospective buyers out to their ships on the Potomac, took
slaves ashore, exhibited them in dark smoky taverns, and sailed up creeks and
bays marketing their wares.Ó
The plantation elite
partnered in slaving voyages to Africa: Jails and whipping posts, stocks and
pillories and gallows rose from the red Potomac dust. Luxury and profit were
won as the dark horses of tobacco and slavery harnessed all -- Africans,
indentured servants, hired hands, wives and children -- to the land. Tobacco is
Ò the crop that wears out men and land,Ó wrote Thomas Jefferson, who called it
Òa culture productive of infinite wretchedness.Ó
Every rich planter who
lived on the river had his own sloops and barges rowed by trained and often
uniformed black slave crews. White children were suckled by slave women, reared
by black nurses, trained by tutors and governesses. The gentry gathered for
lavish banquets. They fox-hunted and cock-fought, matched horses, bullets, wits
and swords. They feasted, they drank and they toasted, Òour Land free, our Men
honest, our Women fruitful.Ó
Their philosophy was
riddled with contradiction. Washington and Jefferson denounced slavery in
print, but defended its practice. On the eve of Independence, Jefferson owned
383 slaves. ÒWhat is there to be done?Ó said George Washington, unwilling to
free his slaves. At his death (1799) he owned 316 slaves. He never set them
free.
Like the 555-foot spire
in his name, George Washington was a force that loomed over the Potomac. Born
and raised on the river, he was hired out of boyhood to survey the million
acres of Potomac country granted to Lord Thomas Fairfax by King James I.
Great-grandfather John secured the tracts that the industrious George grew into
a 7,600-acre tobacco plantation.
Surveyor, statesman,
soldier -- George WashingtonÕs greatest love was farming. This I see revealed
in the motifs painted on the ceilings of his Mount Vernon estate, 16 miles
south of the capitol. I walk the stables, the mansion, the expansive gardens
and fields planted with WashingtonÕs favored trees. ÒRode to my Mill Swamp,Ó
Washington wrote (1785), Òand to other places in search of trees I shall want
for my Walks, Groves and Wildernesses.Ó
There were 150 horses at
Mount Vernon, as many cows, 500 sheep, and 200 oxen. To breed mules, the King
of Spain sent a jackass. George sent to England for deer, to France for hounds
and partridges, to China for pheasants and pigs. There was carpentry,
blacksmithing and wagon making; milling, distilling and shipbuilding; spinning,
weaving and knitting.
Seated on the
high-columned piazza overlooking the river, I can imagine WashingtonÕs romance
with Mount Vernon. The rolling green slopes down to the water under ancient
trees. Here, overlord to miles of Potomac shore and a river four miles across,
Washington secured a delightful and happy life. ÒI can truly say I had rather
be at Mount Vernon with a friend or two about me,Ó he wrote (1790), Òthan to be
attended at the seat of government by officers of State and representatives of
every power in Europe.Ó
Unlike Mount Vernon,
nearby Gunston Hall is not often crowded with tourists. Here lived gentleman
farmer George Mason, the second largest slaveholder in Fairfax County. Mason
helped draft the U.S. Constitution, but refused to sign the final copy because
it did not prohibit the importation of slaves, did not adequately restrain the
powers of federal government, and it lacked a bill of rights.
ÒGunston Hall is truly
remarkable,Ó says Education Coordinator Denise McHugh. ÒWhen I lead tours here,
I address MasonÕs position on slavery.Ó Denise quotes MasonÕs 1776 Virginia
Declaration of Rights: ÒAll men are by nature equally free and independent,
and have certain inherent rights. Namely: the enjoyment of life and liberty,
with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining
happiness and safety.Ó
POTOMAC WAR HISTORY
At Independence, all
roads crossed the Potomac. Annapolis and Philadelphia lay to the north,
Williamsburg and Charlestown to the south. Taxed to the limits of their
enlightened tempers by mother England, the colonists were liberty mad. The tea
dumped at Boston led to a British blockade and to war. Companies of soldiers
formed rapidly along the Potomac, men arming and training everywhere.
ÒI believe we must
defend our plantations upon Potowmack with our Musquets,Ó reported WashingtonÕs
farm manager (1775), at a council of war. ÒThe gentlemen are ready and willing
to turn out to defend any manÕs property -- but the common people are most
Hellishly frightened.Ó
Transoceanic trade
ground to a halt as British ships raided Potomac shores in 1776. Racked with
disease, short of fresh water, food and munitions, harassed by the Patriots,
the Brits raked the shore with canon. They landed sporadically, hit and run, torching
houses and barns in a guerrilla campaign that terrified the Americans. They
looted plantations, pillaged slaves and provisions.
By 1783, and warÕs end,
King Tobacco was dead. Peace could not restore it; the land could not take it.
People moved away, plantations collapsed, slaves and land were sold.
Anticipating tobaccoÕs demise, Washington had diversified his Mount Vernon
industries by 1766, phasing tobacco out, churning profit out of his granaries,
his Potomac River fisheries and his textiles. With wife MarthaÕs death in 1802,
even Mount Vernon succumbed to decay.
In 1791, the farmland
near Georgetown was purchased as the Capitol site, and a pugnacious little
Frenchman named Pierre LÕEnfant was commissioned by George Washington to lay
the plans for the future capital. The city was built out of the forests and
quarries of the Potomac Valley. Like Fort Washington, built for defense in 1808
(across the Potomac from Mount Vernon), the city was burned in the War of 1812
by marauding British ships.
During daily walks and
runs I explore the monuments, the athletic fields and tourist attractions, but
what is todayÕs Potomac Park was once an apocalyptic hellhole. Malarial swamps
were dredged and filled to create the Òtidal basin,Ó which rings the monuments.
The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials were erected on the sites of the holding
pens and auction blocks of slavery.
While Potomac trade
prospered mildly, and the city grew, life along the Potomac bottomed out.
ÒNothing can present to the eyes a more dreary and miserable aspect,Ó wrote one
traveler (1820), Òthan the condition of the river counties of Maryland, a
landscape of dreary uncultivated wastes, barren and exhausted soil, houses
falling to decay, fences wind-shaken and dilapidated.Ó
In 1830, more than half
the population was enslaved. By 1844, the Potomac was a mainstay for the
Underground Railroad. In 1848, for example, 76 house servants belonging to
local families attempted to escape by boat to the Chesapeake Bay. Slavery
shuddered as the U.S. Congress passed the ÒCompromise of 1850,Ó but it was not
until 1862 that it was officially abolished. Liberties granted to blacks were
quietly dismantled under Reconstruction a few years later.
The few wealthy
landowners who questioned the institutions of planter society and freed their
slaves were harassed and threatened; some driven out. With civil war in 1861,
battle lines were drawn. Confederates marched against Yanks, the Potomac and
slavery between them. Troops amassed at the bridges. No longer a unifying force
in the wilderness, the Potomac was synonymous with war.
THE PEACE OF POCAHONTAS
It is another day and I
am out in a canoe battling the riverÕs currents and then drifting lazily under
a scorching sun. Skull boats and crews race by. At sunset I paddle back to
JackÕs -- the only place in Washington where they remember my name each time I
come. Frank and Bill are friendly, and JackÕs is peaceful. There is a shady
river hammock, and Pocahontas calls to me. The Potomac takes me there.
As for the pagan
princess – native nymph of grove and stream, that great Earth Mother of
the Americas -- her efforts to negotiate the clash of civilizations failed. She
betrayed her people in this, and was herself betrayed. Her marriage to John
Rolfe in 1614 secured the survival of the English colony. They called it the Peace
of Pocahontas.
It would not last.
Pocahontas fell ill on a
ship leaving England. Taken ashore, purged and bled, she died an alien in an
alien land. Buried in an unmarked grave on English soil, denied the forests of
her Potomac paradise, she had lost her self and perhaps her soul. It was March
21, 1617. Pocahontas was 22. She was the made-to-order American heroine, the
amorous native who risked her life for the bold, blond Englishmen. Here was
born the legend.
March 22, 1622 -- five
years and one day later -- the Algonquians united to massacre hundreds of
colonists. Hundreds more perished of hardship. Yet the Europeans kept on
coming. The Crown ordered Òa perpetual war without peace or truce,Ó an
organized extermination of the natives. The indefatigable Captain John Smith
volunteered for the job. Twenty-four years later, the half-breed son of
Pocahontas assisted. The rest is History. ~end